Impulse Buyers

Impulse buyers are people who make a purchase without planning to do so. They see a promo, sale or an ad, then immediately visit the store to buy.

According to research,84% of Americans consider themselves as impulse buyers. Of this number, 54% admit to spending more than $100 on an impulse purchase, while 20% admit to spending $1,000 on impulse.

I’ve bet you’ve done this a few times too. If you buy a chocolate bar you see from the counter, or buy a product after viewing it on Instagram, then that’s considered an impulse.

Impulse buyers are good for business. You don’t need to target them through numerous marketing campaigns, and there’s less effort required to get them to make a purchase. They’re also most likely to buy fast, once targeted. But how do you target impulse buyers? How do you influence them to make a purchase? In this article, we’ll let you know what you need to do.

Trigger FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Have you ever seen a product that you loved and thought, “If I don’t buy it now, then it might be sold out?”

This is FOMO in a nutshell.

Promotional campaigns that alert customers about limited stocks is a trick used by marketers to trigger a buyers’ sense of urgency. Words such as “One day Only”, “Buy now while stocks last”, “Limited stocks”, “First 100 orders only” is one way to trigger impulsive shoppers.

Create Flash Sales

Flash sales are a fast and easy way to make sales from impulse buyers. The limited offer and the discount they’ll get, will likely tempt them to make a purchase.

You can announce flash sales by releasing a pub on Facebook or sending an email to your mailing list. Here’s a sample of a flash sale from CreativeLive, an online educational platform:

Add Complementary Products

Complementary products are products that are ideally bought together. When you see phrases like “Customers who bought this also bought,” followed by a list of recommended products, they’re likely to be complementary.

Here’s an example of how Amazon upsells its related products:

Another way to employ this strategy is to bundle related items together, but offer them at a slight discount. You can make these bundles available on your online store or offer related products after checkout.

Product Placements

What are the products that you want customers to buy impulsively?

Once you’ve identified them, put these in your home page. Don’t make people search for them. You want these people to visit your website, see the product and buy it immediately.

Here’s an example of good product placement from Althea Korea:

The brand clearly displays their top picks and new arrivals. So when customers visit their website they’ll end up purchasing it, even if they didn’t plan to do so.

This is the same tactic that’s used by physical stores. The difference is they see these products near the cash register, while they wait it line. If you’re a bookstore, then you can make popular items more prominent by displaying them on a wall where everyone can see them.

Are there instances where you bought items on impulse? What triggered you to do so? Let us know in the comments down below.

Love Island has once again took the UK public by storm this summer, dominating everyone’s news feeds and Twitter trends. Although little Gee has divided the nation on whether she actually is the loyal person she preaches about. By walking away from the £50,000 prize in order to be with Sam, she showed many people that sometimes, just sometimes, you are what you preach. She may not be walking away with her pockets deeper, but she got the prize she wanted.

What does Love Island have to do with Ecommerce? Well, there is a lot we can learn from little Gee and the new catch phrase from the summer, when it comes to thinking about retaining customers. While your website needs to be visually pleasing it also has to be seamless in its functionality, so it has the ability to reach new audiences whilst retaining previous customers. Shopify has introduced new features this summer so you can be more dynamic and get personal on your website. Allowing Shopify Experts to enhance your Ecommerce store and implementing functionalities such as dynamic personal product recommendations can massively improve your repeat customer rate. Loyalty should always get rewarded and businesses need to ensure it is part of their ongoing and long-term Ecommerce strategy.

Why rewarding loyalty is so important.

Statistics have shown that it is far more cost effective to keep current customers than it is to acquire new ones. Having a steady flow of new customers purchasing is, of course, essential, as it allows you to consistently grow. It is equally important, however, to ensure that you don’t have a high number of one time buyers. Customers that repeatedly buy from you gives you an opportunity for free promotion and marketing. Repeat buyers will often praise you through word of mouth and by leaving reviews which you can showcase on your site and across your social platforms. Don’t put all of your time and effort into grafting when you’ve already found your rainbow fish.

Have you ever bought a product and a week later, you see it’s on sale for half the price? Or when a company you have been following since 2008 runs a competition and a person who has only just started to follow them wins the £250 beauty bundle?

While it can’t be denied that we all love a bargain, many of us have at least one brand that we continually buy from, regardless of price. For instance, many companies have created their own cheaper version of Vaseline, however, many of us will still only buy the original because we believe in the quality of it and therefore are prepared to pay the extra. It’s a two-way relationship, we need them and let’s be honest, they need us. So, why shouldn’t brands treat us for being loyal?

Don’t get muggled.

There are always going to be brands that sell similar products to you and will have no problem with stepping on your toes to get to your customer base. While not every customer can be saved, it’s important to make sure that when it comes to being dumped, you have done everything you can to save yourself.

So, how do you do it?

Birthday Gifts

Remember their birthday and always turn up to the party with a gift. This is a standard for most companies, so make sure it is your standard. All birthday messages from your brand should be personalised to that customer – no one wants to feel like their just another person on a list.

Give them a gift, it’s their day! This could be in the form of a discount code or a freebie of their choice, either way, it’s a nice personal touch and who doesn’t want an extra present?

Who is actually loyal?

Segment your consumers. Multiple email platforms allow you to separate your email subscribers based on various conditions, this needs to be your first port of call. Many businesses will focus on waking up their inactive subscribers and while this should be an important part of your strategy, many companies forget their VIP subscribers.

You need to treat customers who have bought multiple times from your store. It’s a nice gesture and where possible personalise the discount or tailor product recommendations to what they would be interested in. This small gesture helps build a rapport and trust between you and the customer, making them feel more important than just an order number.

Create a points system loyalty scheme for your consumers.

Implementing a points system is very effective and encourages consumers to keep coming back, especially as they know they are also benefiting from it. Loyalty schemes create a sense of belonging, your own community and those who join up should be treated like this, whether it’s building up points to take the weight off of christmas, or sending out exclusive sneak peeks. The maintenance of retaining this relationship will include sacrifice on your side, however the long term benefits really do weight out the cons and you will have lifetime customers, who will praise you through word of mouth to their friendship circles.

When you have a brick and mortar store, it is easy to spot those who are repeat customers and get to know them. The online world is a lot harder to make those relationships and build up a rapport.

It is important that you graft for new customers that come to your website, but it is equally important to maintain the older and more loyal bonds you have in place.

Impulse buyers are people who make a purchase without planning to do so. They see a promo, sale or an ad, then immediately visit the store to buy.

According to research, 84% of Americans consider themselves as impulse buyers. Of this number, 54% admit to spending more than $100 on an impulse purchase, while 20% admit to spending $1,000 on impulse.

I’ve bet you’ve done this a few times too. If you buy a chocolate bar you see from the counter, or buy a product after viewing it on Instagram, then that’s considered an impulse.

Impulse buyers are good for business. You don’t need to target them through numerous marketing campaigns, and there’s less effort required to get them to make a purchase. They’re also most likely to buy fast, once targeted. But how do you target impulse buyers? How do you influence them to make a purchase? In this article, we’ll let you know what you need to do.

Trigger FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Have you ever seen a product that you loved and thought, “If I don’t buy it now, then it might be sold out?”

This is FOMO in a nutshell.

Promotional campaigns that alert customers about limited stocks is a trick used by marketers to trigger a buyers’ sense of urgency. Words such as “One day Only”, “Buy now while stocks last”, “Limited stocks”, “First 100 orders only” is one way to trigger impulsive shoppers.

Create Flash Sales

Flash sales are a fast and easy way to make sales from impulse buyers. The limited offer and the discount they’ll get, will likely tempt them to make a purchase.

You can announce flash sales by releasing a pub on Facebook or sending an email to your mailing list. Here’s a sample of a flash sale from CreativeLive, an online educational platform:

Add Complementary Products

Complementary products are products that are ideally bought together. When you see phrases like “Customers who bought this also bought,” followed by a list of recommended products, they’re likely to be complementary.

Here’s an example of how Amazon upsells its related products:

Another way to employ this strategy is to bundle related items together, but offer them at a slight discount. You can make these bundles available on your online store or offer related products after checkout.

Product Placements

What are the products that you want customers to buy impulsively?

Once you’ve identified them, put these in your home page. Don’t make people search for them. You want these people to visit your website, see the product and buy it immediately.

Here’s an example of good product placement from Althea Korea:

The brand clearly displays their top picks and new arrivals. So when customers visit their website they’ll end up purchasing it, even if they didn’t plan to do so.

This is the same tactic that’s used by physical stores. The difference is they see these products near the cash register, while they wait it line. If you’re a bookstore, then you can make popular items more prominent by displaying them on a wall where everyone can see them.

Interested in how we can help you make the most of your online store? Digital Cake are Shopify experts, as an agency, we know what will help you be better online.

If you have eyes, you’re able to look across your room and identify the objects that are familiar to you. You can recognize your laptop, phone, desk and everything else that you own.

The same applies for visual search. The difference is the image is uploaded on the computer, and the image itself is used to perform a search query.

Its important to note that visual search is different from image search. The latter is used to find images based on text. For example, you type “Starbucks lattes” and click search to find pictures on Google Images. The computer doesn’t use the image itself to find the image, instead it uses structured data associated with the file.

Meanwhile, visual search relies on the image itself to conduct a query. Imagine taking a picture of the shoes of your friend. With a visual search tool, you can find the name of the product, where it can be bought, the sizes available and product reviews, based on the image file alone.

Here’s an example of a visual search via Pinterest Lens:

The app can identify the items in the image such as the coffee table, décor and living room.

For the uninitiated, Pinterest Lens is a mobile app that uses a smartphone’s camera to recognize physical objects and find related items on Pinterest. After that, it presents a series of tags that can be associated with the image.

The social media giant also introduced its Shop the Look feature, which makes items in pins appear as products that people can shop. Products are identified with a blue circle. Users can find information about these products and tap an image to buy it. Clothing brands such as Macy’s, Target and Wayfair have used this feature to sell their products online.

Google Lens works in the same way. It uses your smartphone camera to identify additional information on the image. For example, you can take a photo of a restaurant and find its name and star ratings in the Knowledge Panel.

So what’s the implication of visual search for the future?

Imagine seeing a picture of a resort or a pool and finding out where its located, reviews and prices. Imagine snapping a picture of a shoe in an ad, and being able to shop it.

How to Leverage Visual Search

Visual search is a relatively new technology, but there are a lot of ways you can prepare for it to get ahead in the game.

Visual search, like text-based search engines, rely on schema markup and metadata to find related images. This is why you should optimize your images so visual applications can easily find and recognize them.

Here’s some image optimization techniques you can use:

Add descriptive alt + text to images

Optimize images for mobile

Use targeted keywords to describe the title, caption and description of the image

Submit images to an image sitemap

Utilize appropriate schema markup for images

Set up images badges and run through structured data sets

Interested in how we can help you make the most of your online store? Digital Cake are Shopify experts, as an agency, we know what will help you be better online. Get in Touch

When it comes to growing your eCommerce business, it can be hard to come up with a plan. What’s your objective? What are your action plans, and will it truly help you achieve your initial objectives? These are not new problems, and these concerns are pretty common among online eCommerce businesses.

The good news is there are simple business and marketing methodologies that can help you create a solid marketing plan. And one of our favourites is the traditional SWOT analysis. In this article, we’ll talk about how a simple SWOT analysis can help you determine how best you can achieve eCommerce success.

But first, let’s answer a simple question….

What Is a SWOT Analysis?

For starters, a SWOT analysis contains four quadrants: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Below we’ll discuss what each category in-depth and provide you with a series of guide questions to help you create your own SWOT for your business.

Strengths – describe what your business is good at. What are you good at? What’s your advantage against your competitors? What resources do you possess?

Weaknesses – describe the areas of your business that need improvement. What does your business lack? What are the products that don’t sell? Do you lack certain resources? Do you have the requisite marketing and SEO skills in-house? Where are your competitors stronger than you? What do your competitors do better than you?

Opportunities – are a set of circumstances that can enable you to grow your business. What are the opportunities in your industry? Are there any marketing trends you can leverage?

Threats – are factors that can pose a risk to your business. Do you have new competitors aggressively gathering market share? Are there factors that are decreasing your revenues or potential profits? Is the gap between you and your competitors growing?

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that may impact your organization, whereas opportunities and threats are international factors that may impact the landscape the company operates in.

So what?

To help you recognize how vital a SWOT analysis is to your eCommerce business: let us consider the following fictional business: Mandy’s Graphic Tees.

Mandy just started selling graphic tees on her online website, and the problem is she does not have a lot of customers. Her website is optimised, her products are organised and she has an online presence. However, since she just started out, she has a few problems.

Mandy’s business lacks a social media following and her online content is only picking up a few engagements. She does not rank on the first page and she doesn’t get much traffic via search engines. She has also identified commercial keywords but currently ranks around the bottom of page 5 for these terms.

Mandy has a lot of competitors online, yet there are opportunities in the local market in her area. In her area, she has 2 competitors that have been going for nearly 2 years, yet they lack an engaging online presence. She’s hiring a content creator, social media specialist and SEO experts to get her business off-the-ground.

Given this data, Mandy’s SWOT could look like this:

Through a simple SWOT analysis, Mandy is able to clearly identify what she needs to do in order to achieve eCommerce success.

How does your SWOT analysis look like? Let us know how we can help.

Interested in how we can help you make the most of your online store? Digital Cake are Shopify experts, as an agency, we know what will help you be better online.

AI-powered technologies are expected to replace tasks reserved for human sales professionals and merchandisers. It won’t replace humans 100%, but it will speed up transactions and improve the experiences of online shoppers.

So, should you jump into the trend and leverage AI technology? In this article, we’ll discuss the three reasons why you need to take the leap.

AI Enables Personalised Product Recommendations

For the past year, I bet you’ve seen ecommerce websites where the product recommendations you receive, are based on the products that you’ve previously bought or searched. Make no mistake: These convenient recommendations are made possible through the help of AI.

With machine learning algorithms, AI has helped ecommerce websites deliver data-backed search results that are in-line with a customer’s past and present behaviour.

AI Enables Fast and Efficient Consumer Experiences

Many brands have used chatbots through messaging apps, like Messenger. These chatbots function as sales agents, who entertain consumer questions and provide product recommendations.

For instance, eBay has created a virtual personal shopping assistant called Shopbot. All consumers need to do is let the bot know what they’re shopping for, it will then ask relevant questions to narrow-down the search.

Clothing brand Aerie by American Eagle Outfitters has also developed chatbots for the Kik messaging app. Similar to eBay, Aerie’s chatbot asks what you’re looking for, followed by a series of questions to help narrow down the search. What sets it apart; however, is its ability to communicate with millennials via a millennial “voice.” It also has a “this” or “that” option to help you pick the one you love the most.

These examples show how conversations with AI are rapidly changing our shopping experience. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2018, 30% of our interactions with technology will be through “conversations” with smart machines.

AI Can Conduct Predictive Analytics

Another amazing thing about AI is its ability to conduct predictive analytics. With AI, marketers will be able to predict the number of digital interactions that must be sent before a specific customer makes a purchase. It can then create segment these customers and group them, according to the customer journey that will entice them to make a purchase.

Predictive analytics can also determine the products which need to be discounted, and which ones will be sold out with or without sales or promos.

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In summary, its certain that AI will change the ecommerce landscape in the upcoming year. They will make customer experiences faster and more efficient. But the question is: Is your business ready for AI in 2018?

Need to get your business ready for Artificial Intelligence? Check out our SEO services to make sure you are.

How can you upgrade your ecommerce store this 2018?

As Shopify experts, we are constantly on the pulse of what is new in the world of e-commerce. The online world changes rapidly, being at forefront of emerging trends is the only place you want to be.

1. Voice Search

Voice search is one of the most popular ecommerce trends in 2018.
A research by Walker Sands Digital found that one-quarter of consumers (24%) owned Amazon Echo or Google Home, and more consumers (20%) planned to purchase these in 2018. In addition, Salesforce reported that 40% of millennials used voice assistants like Siri and Bixby via their smartphones.

These findings are significant because consumers use these devices to make purchases. In fact, Consumer Research Intelligence Partners reported that owners of Amazon Echo spent an average of $1,600 per year, compared to the $1,300 per-year average of Prime consumers.

2. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is expected to become mainstream in 2018.

For starters, AR technology shows a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world. For example in Amazon’s AR View App, you can see how their products would look like through your phone camera. This is extremely useful if you’re buying décor and you need to visualize your purchases. You can easily determine how a vase would improve the aesthetic of your home, and what color you should buy. You could also determine if a furniture would fit in a specific space in your home.

Augmented reality is also making strides in the beauty industry. Take for instance Sephora’s Virtual Artist App which allows users to try on thousands of lip colors, using their mobile application. This lets you easily identify the right shades that would look great on you. You also don’t have to experience the hassle of putting the lipstick itself, removing it, and repeating the process until you find one that you like.

In 2018, augmented reality is also expected to expand in retail. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to use it to determine what sizes of clothes or shoes fits you. You’ll also be able to see yourself in your chosen outfit or shoes, without the hassle of going in-store and trying everything in a dressing room.

3. Chatbots

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85% of consumer interactions will happen without interacting with a single human.

This is no surprise since big brands are using chatbots to provide customer service.

For example, Starbucks launched the mobile app My Starbucks barista and took customers’ orders via messaging and voice recognition. It then processed these payment and identified the Starbucks branch that consumers should order from.

Fashion brands have also used chatbots to improve the customer experience. For instance, Aerie by American Eagle Outfitters has used chatbots to move customers along the the buying cycle. They asked consumers the product they’re looking for, and narrowed the search down through a series of questions.

What makes chatbots unique is their ability to generate data on a consumer’s product preferences, based on how they respond to marketing campaigns and how they behave on the site. Meaning that they know the best way to direct customers down the sales funnel.

All these shoppers need to do is visit the company’s website via the link provided in the cashback website. Afterwards, whenever they buy an item, they receive money once the transaction is processed. The amount they get can range from a few pennies to more than £100!

It’s also pretty damn fast to sign up in any cashback website.

Once users create a profile, they can login and search for deals on the retailers they want to buy from, like AliExpress, BT Broadband and Expedia.

That’s right—users can get great deals on flights, hotel bookings, broadband offers, shoes and a lot more!

Here’s a sample of the latest offerings from a cashback website:

These offers are irresistible, and it’s obvious why everyone loves them. Think about the amount of money that consumers can save by shopping in a cashback website.

A study by Statista found that among respondents with an annual income below 50,000 British pounds, 63 percent said that they would purchase a product based on its high-value cash back rebate. The same results were found among those belonging in the 50,000 to 99,999 income bracket.

For retailers, this means that they’re missing out on a huge opportunity, if they’re not in any cashback website.

Which Products Work Best In Cashback Websites?

Cashback websites work best with products in the switchers market, such as insurance and broadband. With a great deal, you can easily entice customers to switch to your brand.

Online store owners who offer products that are sold by other merchants can also get the market share of their competitors via cashback websites. Users can easily search for a product and compare it with competitors, by filtering the results based on name, highest %, highest £, popularity and newest added.

If you offer the best deal or have the highest £ rate, you can rank first in the filtered results of the cashback websites. Meaning that with a good offer you can drive a lot of traffic to your online store.

This is how cashback websites earn and why they pay out money. Since they have the ability to direct traffic, they earn money based on the number of clicks, transactions or accepted applicants—that were a direct result of the offer posted on the site. Cashback websites then distribute some of the money they were paid to shoppers who avail of the deal.

Just starting out? Get into a cashback website ASAP.

Cashback websites are one of the hottest business models in ecommerce marketing.

Consumers find it easy to sign up and find the best deals, while, retailers can beat their competition —based on the deals they offer.

The Best Ecommerce Platform

You’ve decided you want to either migrate to or start up on an ecommerce platform, but with so many options out there, it’s hard to know which one to select.

Of course, you have to look at your businesses position, analyse the strengths and weaknesses as well as envisioning where you want your business to be in the future. While many will answer this questions of future position with a simple one: to make more money, but this analysis requires a deeper anaylsis, for example if your selling footwear, you need to answer: what footwear do you want to sell, what demographic do you want to sell too and how is your branding and website going to get you there?

You may have the coolest physical store, that breathes individuality, alternativity and independence, so people actually enjoy being in there, but does your website reflect this personality? A lot of the time, it doesn’t.

Back to ecommerce platforms, there are the two big players in the game and that’s Shopify and Magento. Up until recently, Magento dominated the ecommerce platform field, but Shopify is rapidly catching up with them. You want an ecommerce platform that is going to be able to grow with you and have the ability to evolve, so you don’t get left behind. Both platforms do this but in different ways.

Hosting

Shopify: To be on the Shopify platform there is a monthly charge, this charge is dependent on what package you choose, so as your business evolves so does your platform. This charge incorporates various charges such as security, support, payment gateway (if you choose to use Shopify’s payment gateway Stripe) as well as your hosting. There is on hand support 24/7 so if you have any issues with your site then there are experts within the Shopify community to help you around the clock. By having this all taken care of, it gives you the ability to focus on what’s really important – converting customerrs through a sleek user journey and making your website work the way you need it too.

Magento: Magento is a free open source platform, but like with a lot of things in life, free doesn’t necessarily mean free. While it’s free to set up you still have to set up hosting somewhere else, many will argue that this is the best option as you have free control over where your site is hosted. Along with an added hosting charge, you will also have to put in place security measures and all of this ends up adding up. Furthermore, there is no official support offered by magento instead there is an established community of magento developers who offer insightful and detailed support to those having issues with the platform. While this information may be correct, the solution is not necessarily instantaneous which presents problems to Magento sites.

Design

Both platforms offer themes and apps to add functionality and elements of customisability to your store, however, Magento is often seen as the one out of the two that has more capability to make your store unique. This is due to the fact that Magento is highly technical, meaning even if you had a basic knowledge of how things work in the back end of a site you would probably still be at a loss as to how customise your site. This brings up problems if you wanted to change something on your site as you would have to hire an experienced Magento developer, adding an unnecessary cost to yourself. Shopify has a massive range of themes, premium and free to customise yourself, while many suggest that all Shopify sites look the same this isn’t actually the case at all. With the help of an agency who are Shopify experts, your site will stand out from the crowd from other more basic themed Shopify stores. However, some functionalities will be the same across all sites such as the ease of the checkout process itself as a simple checkout will more likely lead to a better conversion funnel and therefore rate.

Statistics

Both Magento and Shopify have a dashboard in the admin panel that gives you the most up to date analytics and statistics on your store, while Shopify won’t necessarily let you look at the store lifetime sales it still has an amazing number of stats that Magento doesn’t. For instance, Shopify will let you look at what users have inputted into the search bar of the site which has returned no product. While you may think this is pointless as a majority of it could be users misspelling products or trends, it is useful to monitor as it can influence your buying patterns. Another handy statistic given to you by Shopify is your conversion funnel rate, so you are able to see the percentage of potential consumers who are adding to cart compared to those who actually reach the checkout and complete a purchase. Conversion funnel rates are essential into understanding why your site may not be converting as well as you had hoped, if you have a massive drop off in the conversion funnel, then it means your checkout process needs scrutinising.

There has been a reported loss of revenue and profits for Zara within the US and the UK in the last year, despite an increase in sales. Thankfully, this hasn’t stopped Zara from investing heavily into their UK branches, and more importantly, technology.

An article from Inditex hinted that a temporary pop-up store in Westfield Stratford would be opened last Friday but this pop-up store would be one like no other. One of Zara’s flagship stores is undergoing a massive transformation and is set for reopening in May with some pretty innovative and revealing changes within the retail and digital world.

With an integration of the offline and online in the retail industry, we could not only see a change in the way offline stores operate but also see alterations made in online user journeys and social media marketing.

The Pop-Up Store

The temporary pop up store has been designed for consumers to order and collect online purchases that have been made, as well as a click and collect service. This is a stern move towards the integration of the online and offline and Zara have spared no expense.

The argument against online shopping is that consumers still like to be able to see and experience the product. Consumers also love to try garments on, because in reality it never looks the same as it does on the model. The advancements in technology within the pop-up store (which will no doubt also be incorporated into the new flagship store in Westfield Stratford), have enabled this functionality with the creation of a mirror embedded product recommendation system. This system not only knows your size without you having to input it but also recommends other garments and accessories which compliment the garment you are interested in. This is an exciting step forward for retailers, buyers, and ecommerce. The detailed personalisation of this technology can only increase that all important conversion rate.

The Refurbished Flagship Store

This week marked the start of the much-anticipated refurbishment of Zara’s flagship store in Westfield Stratford. It has been planned that the new store will have four main sections; womenswear, menswear, kidswear and a section dedicated to online orders. This change comes from Zara’s ever-growing commitment to creating the perfect omni-channel experience.

The collection point will be formed of two small warehouses that allow for online orders to be collected in store by consumers whenever it suits them. Now, I know your thinking ‘Loads of retailers are providing click and collect services, what is so special about this one?’ Well, first of all no more waiting around in ques to collect your package. The system has been created so that it can scan a QR code as well as PIN codes that have been generated on ordering, so in just a few seconds your order is processed and placed in a mailbox within the store to be collected.

What else? You can now pay via the Zara and Inditex App, InWallet or even through a self checkout making paying in-store even easier, for those in a hurry. Not only is Zara committed to creating a more wholesome and consistent experience for shoppers, they are also dedicated to their own eco-efficient store programme which will lead to systems placed in the new store that aims at reducing energy and emissions as well as encouraging paperless receipts.

The Impact On Ecommerce

Evidently the impact is hard to predict as this pop-up store and the plans for the new Zara are the first of its kind, however, we can try. This innovation suggests a massive move towards Zara building an omni-channel experience, which people have been crying out for. The concept is based around the idea that no matter how a consumer has decided to buy, whether it is in store, on a mobile or through an app, their experience should always provide the same value. This hasn’t necessarily been the case, for instance with some retail stores they have products that are for online consumers only and similarly in the store, sales online and sales in-store do not always match.

If these advances made by Zara are successful then it could lead to a whole new way of shopping. Moving towards a merge of experiences between the offline and the online and will lead the way in other companies moving heavily towards the need for digital services.

Conclusion

It is early days yet and Zara will have a long way to go before they can start to fine tune the experience to reflect what the consumer actually wants. Nevertheless, they have shown initiative as well as the ability to adapt, by being the first big retail chain to make this kind of move. This move has put them ahead of their competitors in terms of innovation and trend setting. Zara have also demonstrated that there is a massive need for retailers that operate both in store and online to constantly refine and revolutionise the user experience in order to create more conversions.

Apex’s big prediction? Zara will heavily rely on a big push of social media marketing and PR from now on, with interactive videos planning to make a big wave this year they could really benefit from demonstrating their new technology to their big following.

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